Quietly sitting at the lights ...

... in the ute the other day waiting for the traffic to take off from the Berrimah lights up the Highway (there is only one). I was heading for Berrimah so was side on to the traffic.

Nothing special about the line up - bike, couple of cars and a truck or two.

Lights change and, with a high pitched whirrrr, definitely not a roar, the bike took off. It was through the lights before anyone else had left the grid. No wheelspin, no dramatics, just mega acceleration.

And it was a woman - I think. Leathers and helmet made it difficult to tell but the flat, girlie type shoes were a give away.

I cheered and clapped. Looked left and right and the people on either side of me were doing the same. All joined in the appreciation of a great demonstration of power.

I know, I know. She probably broke the law, she wasn't being fuel efficient and she could possibly have caused an accident if someone had pulled around the corner expecting her to be slower.

But it was still great to see.

Maybe I am heading back to my second childhood and have hit the adolescent bit?

The Eagle Has Landed

Judd to the Blues!!!!!

Wahoooo!!!!!!

Actually he should always have been playing for them. Best player in the best team and all of that. Bring on the next season

A Morning's Work

You need a plan. Without a plan you spend a lot of time doing things that are not useful, not a high priority or not in the most efficient sequence.

The plan this morning was to spray some foliar fertiliser on to the citrus. This would allow me to cover the whole orchard area of about 2.5 ha before about 9.30 and before the breeze picks up. On completing that and washing out the spray tank it would be about 10.00 and I would spend the next couple of hours connecting and shifting equipment into the shed. (This is the new shed. The one that I have just spent a month or so building. Thing of beauty!) After lunch it is into research on animal welfare.

A nicely planned day that ensures that I get the spray out before the temperature rises to above 30 degrees. After this it could burn the leaves. It will be on 30 degrees by about 10.00. And I am either around the shed or on the front veranda when the temp gets over 35.

Rear tyre on the tractor has a slow leak. No worries. Whack a bit of air in. Compressor - reliable and used all the time - gives a strange whirr and dies. Check all of the bits - oil, air intakes and filters, lines - all seem clean. Fire it up again. Blows the overload switch. Another look. Nothing obvious. Spray some WD40 about. Electric motor seems to be working OK. Internals are something I know nothing about. May be about to learn.

Anyway, is the tyre that far down? Maybe not. Let's go.

Tractor needs some fuel. No problem. Put 40 litres in. Start it to drive out of the shed (new, very nice shed that is) and the power steering is tight. Will need to do a lot of tight turns at row ends so better put some more fluid in the reservoir. Nuisance of a job. Hard to get at the filler and the thread is dodgy on the filler screw. Have to keep the tractor going and reach in past the fan.

Attach the spray unit. Needs to be carefully lined up because it is difficult to shift if you get it wrong. Very heavy. Got it wrong twice but eventually in place.

Fertiliser is all nicely stacked in its new home in the new shed so don't have to hunt around for that. Fill the tank and mix everything in. Nice organic fertiliser. Smells good and tastes OK - although I didn't really mean to have my mouth open when the splash hit me in the face.

Off we go. Not too bad on the time but may only get one load out before it heats up. No cloud and warming up fast.

First row, sprayer on, all the right noises - nothing. Not a sausage. Nothing coming out of any of the nozzles. Quick check of the basics. All working - or seem to be - but there is nothing coming out. A more serious issue?

Now I have a situation.

440 litres of nicely mixed, organic fertiliser all ready to go. The thing is that, if you let it settle, it can be a problem. The little solids all get together and form a sort of gel that provides a nice gluggy mass on the bottom of the tank. The tank is hard to clean. You have to get your head and shoulders inside with you ending up with your legs sticking out. Most undignified and very difficult to extricate oneself. Also a bit uncomfortable. Small children could do it. Pop them in and only let them out when it is clean. Can't find one.

Check the filters I know about and they are clean. I am going to have to start to pull things apart so I need to empty the tank. Find a 200 litre tank. There is a 75 litre tank on the back of the quad. The rest goes into 20 litre buckets. I have no idea how I will move it back into the spray tank. Siphon? Doesn't taste that good. Lift the 200 litre tank? Difficult but not impossible when you have a tractor that is a precision instrument.

Time has beaten me. Too hot and too late. Will have to happen tomorrow but I have meetings in town tomorrow - so Saturday or Sunday. I will be popular. I like the smell, my neighbours might not. Monday another appointment. Maybe Tuesday.

I will do the job properly. Take the unit off the tractor. Put it in the (lovely new) shed where it will be in the shade and start to pull it to pieces.

All nicely in place to come off, everything comes apart as it is supposed - except the power shaft. Wont move. For some reason it is jammed on significantly further up the spindle than it is supposed to be. Try a small lever to shift it back. Wont move. A bigger lever. A hammer. A crow bar. That shifted it. Finally off.

Now was that part of the problem? Don't know.

Phone ringing. Message bank picks up. Rings again. Must be important. Trek to the house. Message to call real estate agent about a rental property. A prospective tenant has decided not to move in so would we like to go to the next on the list? No - forget it, we will take it off the market. If they don't want it then no one can have it.

Now getting angry and cursing is not sensible. Doesn't get you anywhere. So answer sensibly and as if this was a reasonable question.

Phone rings again. Dive back up the stairs, race for the phone. Don't make it and no message. Rings again and this time I get there.

It is not her fault that she works for these people so it is not right that I should abuse her for wasting my time. So I simply tell her that if I want the product I will go to the shop and buy one but that I have a policy of banning any product or firm that rings me without my request.

Back to the plan.

Shifting equipment into the shed is going to increase its working life by reducing the effect of weather and allowing easier maintenance - and with me there is a direct relationship between ease and frequency.

The shifting involves connecting the items to the tractor and moving them into the shed, placing them on stands that allow one to connect them easily next time. Pretty straightforward.

And it was - pretty well anyway.

And I worked out what was wrong with the compressor. Found a drain plug that I had never located before and opened it - when in doubt pull it apart. Out came a lot of water obviously built up over time. I then checked the book to see if I had missed doing something that I should have been taking care of over time. Nothing in the book so I am both vindicated and just a little dirty on the suppliers for not telling me about it - not that I would have necessarily checked.

I haven't fixed the spray unit though. Had a look and a poke about but couldn't see anything that was going to be in any way straightforward so I decided to leave it for a day or two.

If I fix it over the weekend I will have TWOMD to help me. She can .... hold things and such I guess.

Do They Think We Are That Stupid?

Are we a reflection of the media or is the media a reflection of us?

Put another way - are we as stupid as they think we are or are they?

We are being treated like fools again over this issue of the death penalty for the Bali bombers.

Both major parties have long standing policies against the death penalty. Both major parties hold the basic principle of equal rights for all. Australia signed the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1949 and has since confirmed that view many times.

Somehow there are those, possibly in both parties but certainly in the Liberal/National Parties, who are able to ignore logic and principle and agree that the knocking off certain people is OK.

Now I am confused. Does that mean that it is OK to kill people or not? Is it OK to kill people, for instance:

• if they are in another country?
• if they are in another country and are not Australian?
• if they are in another country and have killed Australians?

Does that mean that just killing Australians is bad? How does that fit with our long standing, bi-partisan national position?

There doesn't seem to me to anything terribly complex or difficult about putting such questions but, faced with politicians running obvious lines, the media have ignored logic and gone completely to the so-called 'populist' position. They are running Alexander Downer's lines as if they mean something, not putting obvious questions to John Howard and gleefully tearing into Robert McClelland as somehow incompetent for stating the bleeding obvious.

Maybe we are fools. If we let the media get away with this sort of rubbish over and over again then it is arguably so.

A Thousand Splendid Suns

Khaled Hosseini has written two books that I have read. 'The Kite Runner' was a heart warming story set around a boy growing up in Afghanistan. A well written, well told story that gave me a very different view of Afghanis and of life there than the one that is normally provided by the media.

I have just finished the second book "A Thousand Splendid Suns". Actually, I finished it very early on Saturday morning on a plane from Darwin to Brisbane.

This book may not have the depth of 'The Kite Runner" but it had a more powerful effect on me.

The story centres around two women. Mariam is an harami, or bastard. This is definitely not a term of endearment. She is caused to marry a man many years her senior when she is 15. It starts out better than you might expect but heads down the reasonably obvious path pretty quickly.

Laila joins the household some years later. The relationship between the two women has a very rocky beginning but grows.

All the while the misery that is recent Afghan politics swims around the household. The Soviets come almost as saviours and go. The mujahadeen arrive as saviours and fall into tribal disarray soon after with terrible results for the population. The Taliban arrive as saviours and, again, soon deliver a continuing disaster for most of the population.

Don't be concerned though that this is a heavy, political book. It is, but it doesn't feel like one. We are taken into the household. We are given an insight into the reality of life. It is tough in parts but by no means without hope and there is plenty of light and love.

I have been told - by someone smarter than me - that the concluding parts could seem a little contrived but I have exercised my right to disagree, just a little.

The characters were able to get under my skin. I felt for Mariam and could empathise with the hard headed decisions of Laila. I can't say that I really understood Rasheed but I could understand some of why he might be as he was. The weakness of Jalil is something with which we are all probably familiar as we are with the bitterness of Nana.

If you read it for no other reason than that you would like a good story then you wont be disappointed. If you want to put a human face to the decisions that refugees actually have to make you will enjoy it more.

And for the young bloke in the nearby seat on the flight from Darwin to Brisbane - that old bloke had tears running down his face because some things in life make you both angry and sad and deserve a tear or two.

The Other Kevin

Our school bus used to bring kids from the valley up to town winding around bush roads for about 30 kms on the way to pick up the kids from Reidsdale who, for some reason, were allowed on to the Araluen bus.

There were no Catholics from Araluen. I have no idea why not. But there were a few from Reidsdale. Not many though. We gave them a terrible time. All dressed up in their neat uniforms with their neat haircuts they were a lot of fun for the public school kids.

Whenever I see Kevin Andrews on TV I am reminded of excessively neat, prissy, hidebound, righteous school kids who seemed to look down their noses at everyone else secure in their knowledge that they knew what is best for everyone else and had the right to tell them.

Outside of school and the bus, those Catholic kids were actually reasonable people and we got on pretty well. And it turned out they were not always neat. They also grew up.

Unfortunately for Kevin Andrews, he never did grow up. He clearly still thinks that he has the right to make judgements for everyone else. He did it in his sponsorship of the legislation to overrule the NT Rights of the Terminally Ill. He was not concerned that the ROTI legislation was introduced and passed only after a long and pretty well informed debate. He simply knew that he was right so he introduced the bill to overrule.

As Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations he stayed true to form. He was so bad, so uncaring and so completely sycophantic to big business that, eventually, even John Howard had to shift him.

Now, where do you put someone like this? Knows he is right, has no feeling for people and knows he is better than everyone else. Immigration! What a perfect fit - that is, if you want to run an immigration policy that ensures that anyone who comes here is properly grateful and if you want to keep out anyone who is not neat.

I saw the interview with Dr Haneef the other night on Four Corners. I guess he could be a terrorist but, to me, he just looked like a young, keen, slightly naive doctor who embodied the hope of his family and gave them some financial security.

Kevin Andrews had the advantage over me - and everyone else. He has seen all of the information that we were given on Four Corners, read all of the transcripts and all of the analysis. Unless there is something that is not yet even hinted at, Kevin Andrews formed a view of Dr Haneef's character that is totally at odds with all of the information available.

You would expect him to do so though because he is, after all, right. He has a capacity to see through the reality to the darkness behind.

Now Kevin Andrews has decided to get stuck into those terrible Sudanese. The kid who was bashed to death in Melbourne brought it all on himself because he 'failed to integrate'. We should stop them coming here because they are from a war torn country and it takes them a while to learn how to live in a peaceful, compassionate country. So don't let them come here. Keep them where they are until they learn how to live peacefully. We are not the sort of country to give anyone a chance.

Kooyong is as safe a seat as the Liberals hold. Kevin Andrews will be there, I expect, for as long as he wants to be. Let us hope that, for the good of us all, he is restricted to fulminating on morality and righteousness from the Opposition benches for the rest of his political career.

Thirty!!!

How about that? My son turns 30 today - or, more precisely, he turned 30 very early this morning. I can't remember the exact time but his mother will.

Amazing thing it was welcoming this new son into the world. It was the first time for me - and for him for that matter.

I clearly recall walking out of the hospital - the old one in Canberra that has now been blown up -and getting into the car. The news came on the radio and I was very surprised that the first item was not about the birth of this new baby boy - seriously.

Over the next few days I came to understand why people often carry on about the birth of babies, gooing over them, congratulating the parents and generally being very chuffed about the state of the world. I wandered about with my chest puffed out as if I had actually done something special.

Which of course I had.

My son has made it to 30 as a competent, confident person. He will go on from here making his own decisions and his own life.

We got him started and I am pretty proud that we did.